Climate & Environment Review: May 31, 2006

Climate & Environment Review: 1st Edition
May 31, 2006

Climate & Environment Weekly is brought to you by The Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP). CSPP is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy organization.

CSPP relies on scientific experts in many nations and the vast body of peer-reviewed literature to help lawmakers, policy makers, and the media distinguish between scientific findings that are agenda-driven and those that are based on accepted scientific methods and practices. In a timely manner, the Center's Science Watch Team alerts policy makers, the media, and the public to unreliable scientific claims and unjustified alarmism which often lead to public harm. We strive for a fair and balanced examination of science.

The Revelle-Gore Story: Attempted Political Suppression of Science
This is a personal account linking efforts to suppress scientific publication about climate science and policy by then-Senator (later vice president) Al Gore and his staff.1 In those efforts, an individual working closely with Senator Gore and his staff made false and damaging statements about my behavior as a scientist. I filed a libel suit against the individual... >>Read More<<

Questions for Al Gore
Dear Mr. Gore: I have just seen your new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," about the threat that global warming presents to humanity. I think you did a very good job of explaining global warming theory, and your presentation was effective. Please convey my compliments to your good friend, Laurie David, for a job well done... >>Read More<<

Sea Surface Temperatures and Atlantic Hurricanes
In an effort designed to answer this important question, the three researchers used weekly-averaged 1° latitude by 1° longitude SST data together with hurricane track data (developed by the National Hurricane Center) that provide hurricane-center locations (latitude and longitude in tenths of a degree) and maximum 1-minute surface wind speeds (both at six-hour intervals) for all tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin that occurred between 1982 (when the SST data set begins) through 2005... >>Read More<<

Nitrogen Mineralization in the Long-Term Swiss FACE Study
In a study whose findings are germane to this hypothesis, Graaff et al. "determined the long-term (9 years) impact of elevated CO2 on N mineralization of Lolium perenne and Trifolium repens plant material grown at ambient and elevated CO2" in the Swiss FACE study that was established at Eschikon in 1993... >>Read More<<

'An Inconvenient Truth' - Al Gore's Fight Against Global Warming
The frustrations of a man whose long-sought goal remains out of reach are vividly on display in the first few minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth," a new documentary about former Vice President. More articles about Al Gore." Al Gore's quest to spur action against recent and archival news about Global Warming."... >>Read More<<

A 2300-Year Record of Drought in the USA's Northern Great Plains
The USA's Northern Great Plains is an important agricultural region of North America, providing a significant source of grain both locally and internationally. Because of its location, it is also susceptible to extreme droughts that tend to persist longer than in any other region of the United States (Karl et al., 1987; Soule, 1992). Laird et al. examined the historical record of drought in this region in an attempt to establish a baseline of natural drought variability, which could help in attempts to determine if current and future droughts might be anthropogenically influenced. In doing so, they examined a high-resolution sediment core from Moon Lake, North Dakota (46.86°N, 98.16°W), which provided a sub-decadal record of salinity (drought) over the past 2300 years... >>Read More<<

The EU's Power Crisis
What would the drafters of the Maastricht treaty in 1992 make of the EU's three so-called pillars in 2006? If they were doing it all over again, they might choose to lump foreign policy with energy, not security... >>Read More<<

Inconvenient Truths Indeed
Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" opens around the country this week. In the film Gore pulls together evidence from every corner of the globe to convince us that climate change is happening fast, we are to blame, and if we don't act immediately, our Earth will be all but ruined. However, as you sit through the film, consider the following inconvenient truths:... >>Read More<<

Researchers Dispute NOAA Over Climate Impact On Hurricanes
On the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted another severe hurricane season, several researchers claimed Monday that a direct correlation exists between the rising intensity of storms and global warming... >>Read More<<

Effects of Elevated CO2 on Nicotine Content and Spread of Potato Virus Y in Tobacco Plants
Tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum L., cv. SamsunNN) were grown in 16-cm-diameter pots filled with quartz sand in controlled-climate chambers maintained at either 350 or 1000 ppm CO2 for a period of eight weeks, where they were irrigated daily with a complete nutrient solution containing either 5 or 8 mM NH4NO3. In addition, some of the plants in each treatment were mechanically infected with the potato virus Y (PVY) when they were six weeks old. At the end of the study, the plants were harvested and a number of their chemical constitutes identified and quantified... >>Read More<<

Hurricanes and Global Warming - Is There a Connection?
Several prominent scientists and a host of climate alarmists have claimed that the intense Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, together with their considerable human and economic impacts, were linked to CO2-induced global warming. To help set the record straight on this important issue, Pielke et al. (2005) review what is fact and what is fiction about the matter... >>Read More<<

You Dirty Rats!
This past February, the New York Times ran a front page Business Section story noting that a Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher "who has spent 28 years doing research on potential carcinogens" had concluded that the widely used artificial sweetener aspartame was likely to pose a human cancer risk... >>Read More<<

The 2005 Hurricane Season
Virmani and Weisberg compared various meteorological properties of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons with those of prior seasons... >>Read More<<

The Media's Know-Nothings
Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby recently reviewed Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." He argued that President Bush "refused to let his administration do anything about climate." And last month New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made the same claim: "most governments have done little to curb greenhouse gases, and the Bush administration has done nothing... >>Read More<<

Time to Vaccinate a Panic
With most junk science alarms there is usually some purveyor of corrupted science who is trying to peddle his wares under the banner of real science. Sometimes it's a "public interest group" whose only real interest is scaring people into conforming to someone else's agenda. Often it's some government agency eager to further its own power through harnessing the agency of the state to shape people's lives through scientific misinformation... >>Read More<<

Carbon's Kindergarten Cop
A wise investor puts her money in investments that offer the highest returns at the lowest cost. A poor investor puts his money in investments that offer low returns at a higher cost. I don't know what you'd call an investor who puts lots of money into "investments" that offer no benefits, but "Schwarzenegger" might be a good label... >>Read More<<

The Bear Facts
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has just put the polar bear on the endangered species list because it is supposedly "facing extinction" -- mainly, it claims, as a result of global warming. But statistics show the polar bear is not facing extinction, not by a long shot... >>Read More<<

Medieval Warm Period (Solar Influence - Temperature) – Summary
The degree to which the sun has influenced earth's climate over the 20th century is a topic of heated discussion in the area of global climate change. The debate derives from the fact that although numerous studies have demonstrated significant correlations between certain measures of solar activity and various climatic phenomena... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week - Goldendale, WA
To bolster our claim that "There Has Been No Net Global Warming for the Past 70 Years," each week we highlight the temperature record of one of the 1221 U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations from 1930-2000... >>Read More<<